Elaine's story

CICD Britain 2002

I joined the CICD in Winestead, Nr Hull on 4 November thinking it was a legitimate organisation/charity and have since uncovered many distressing and dangerous practices.

I have told them I want to leave and they are withholding 1,140 of my money and the same for 3 other colleagues.  They tried to interrogate us individually when we told them we were leaving but we were resolute and insisted we remained as a group.  We therefore got interrogated as a group until after midnight.  They refused to talk to us about refunds and in the morning gave us a prepared check for a fraction of the money we had paid.

We have stayed here over the weekend trying to get them to reconsider but Karen Barsoe has ignored all voice and text messages requesting a meeting and locks herself inside a room refusing even to open the door to accept a letter.

If I had not been convinced before I am most definitely convinced now that money is being syphoned off for some secret project - probably politically motivated.  They claim it costs 700 per person to run CICD which is absolutely ludicrous given the primitive conditions - no running hot water, hardly any heating, one small electric shower between 15 people etc., etc. and then on top of all of that the 'students' (who don't get taught anything useful) have to cook, clean, repair and maintain the property.

I could also tell you about dangerous and illegal practices going on.